The Not-So-Big Ten

I'd like to raise a glass of Champaign to the University of Illinois. When the Illini upset Ohio State in Columbus last weekend, they spared college football fans the pain of watching the Buckeyes' inexorable march to a second straight blowout loss in the BCS national championship game.

I had hoped that underdog Florida's 41-14 annihilation of Ohio State—it wasn't as close as the scored indicated—in last year's title game would force some readjustment in how the BCS system evaluates the Big Ten champs. Mostly stocked with mediocre teams, the conference is not remotely what it is hyped to be. Yet for some reason the BCS keeps treating an undefeated Big Ten season with reverence, as if it's a far greater achievement than, say, an undefeated Big 12 team like the University of Kansas. Winning out in the Big Ten is not even the equivalent of one loss in tougher and more competitive conferences, like the SEC or the Pac-10.

The Big Ten has become a football fraud, a diminished conference that has been riding a reputation established a half-century ago. The football talent in this country, just like the population, has been steadily gravitating south and west for a long time now. While considerable talent remains in the upper Midwest, it tends toward the lumbering rather than the blazing. And as Florida demonstrated so brilliantly last January, speed kills.

Still, it's hard to understand why the experts are so generous in assessing the Big Ten. Perhaps it's because its teams so rarely challenge the national powers from rival conferences. Which helps explain why the Big Ten's out-of-conference record stands at 35-8 this season. But that mark stands as something of a joke—and when you parse the schedule, the joke turns out to be on the BCS as well as the Big Ten and its fans. Check it out:

* This season the 11 Big Ten teams combined have played just two out-of-conference games against nationally ranked teams—and lost both (Oregon 39, Michigan 7; Missouri 40, Illinois 34).

* Big Ten teams have played a total of just 14 games against teams from other major football conferences in 2007. While they have managed a wining mark of 10-4 in those contests, the cumulative record of the teams they defeated is an incredible 24-74, or a winning percentage of .245. In fact, the only winning "major" defeated by a Big Ten team this year is Nevada, a true minor major that has a less-than-lofty 5-4 record.